Thursday, November 30, 2006

State Of Ignorance

A senior American official has spoken of "the myth of the special relationship" between the United States and Britain, arguing that Tony Blair got "nothing, no payback" for supporting President George W Bush in Iraq.

Kendall Myers, a leading State Department adviser, suggested that Mr Blair should have been ditched by Labour but the party had lacked the "courage or audacity" to remove him.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, was "shrewd, astute" to have distanced himself from America.

Mr Myers, a senior analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Analysis and Research, was speaking in a lecture in Washington at the School of Advanced International Studies, part of Johns Hopkins University.

A State Department spokesman said: "The views expressed by Mr Myers in no way represent the views of the United States government."

At least State admits it's not part of the US government - rather supporting America's enemies.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, standing alongside Abbas at a joint press conference in the West Bank city of Jericho, said the US hopes to accelerate efforts to find a solution to the Israeli-Paelstinian conflict and to extend the scope of a recently declared ceasefire between the two sides.

Rice also said the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territories, including what she called "humiliations," must be eased.

In a gesture of support for Palestinian aspirations, Rice said any future Palestinian state should be "viable" and "contiguous" and said no actions should be taken now to prejudge the outcome of a final peace deal. That was an apparent reference to Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank.

Rice doesn't mention that the "humiliations" would stop if the elected Palestinian government would stop "killing" and "kidnapping" Israelis.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki abruptly canceled the first round of face-to-face meetings scheduled here last night with President Bush, just hours after publication of a classified memo from the president's top security aide that says the Iraqi leader is either "ignorant," devious or incapable of governing right now.

The cancellation and the leaked memo by National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley set off a day of "background" briefings by White House officials who refused to be named but tried to explain the ups and downs of diplomacy.

Actually this is about betrayal, not "the ups and downs of diplomacy".

These three episodes damage vital US interests, while revealing the monumental ignorance of the US diplomatic elite. These are the three realities they don't get:

1. The Brits (and Canadians and Australians) don't support the US because it's always right, but because we're joined in blood.

2. If the US forces Israel to concede territory to terrorists, they'll use it to kill Jews, making a Mideast nuclear war not just probable but certain.

3. The poor bloody Iraqi PM is no more able to control what goes on in Iraq than the Coalition. Demanding that he magically sweep away the Iranian and Syrian sponsored killers is beyond his means.